Dale Wheatley discusses the terms at the body donation nonprofit where he works; three severed heads appear inset. (Screenshots via WFLD)
A man from an Illinois nonprofit was greeted by a gruesome and occult scene when he arrived at work two weeks ago to find a clump of sage burning and three severed heads placed on his desk.
Dale Wheatley is a deliverer for the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois, a group of eight state medical schools with a common mission. According to the organization’s website, the AGA “procures, prepares, and stores donations for medical and scientific studies,” and makes its facilities open to medical professionals and students. The donations obtained by the AGA are “an individual’s body after death”, explains their website.
But, according to Wheatley, the AGM has seen much better days.
“The place is deplorable. It’s in lousy conditions,” he said at a press conference this week as reported by the Chicago Tribune. “If you stay there for more than five minutes, if you start walking, you start sticking to the ground.”
In comments reported by Chicago-based Fox affiliate WFLD, Wheatley said some donated bodies were returned to the nonprofit because of the poorly preserved and preserved condition they were in.
“They turn away donors because of mold and rot, bugs,” he said. “There have been instances where I’ve taken donors out of our rack storage room, and rats have chewed the bottom of the bag, through their feet.”
And the trio of severed heads, according to Wheatley, are retaliation for a recent series of complaints he filed with his supervisors.
“My boss came by, I asked him why the heads were at my desk,” he told WFLD. “He said they had to get their bodies so we could send them to cremation. I said, I understand that, ‘Why are they at my office?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know Dale, there’s a lot of weird things going on.'”
The heads, Wheatley added, had a “foul smell”.
AGA Executive Vice President William O’Connor, however, strongly disputed the accusations made by Wheatley, the Tribune reported, saying the group received some bodies in poorer states than others and denying that Wheatley has been retaliated against – noting that handling body parts is part of his job description as he runs the locker room where bodies are stored before being transported in a van.
Wheatley, with the help of labor attorney David Fish, filed a series of complaints with various local regulators, the Tribune reports, to improve conditions at the AGM.
“Mr Wheatley thinks the AGA should have and use a scale to weigh donor bodies to determine the amount of embalming fluid needed to ensure they are not subject to premature decay and decay. reduced utility,” Fish told the newspaper.
“The embalming method requires the bodies to be weighed and the weight to be applicable to the formula, and we don’t have a weight scale at AGA, so the bodies are monitored, the weight is not accurate and that led to these conditions,” Wheatley explained to WFLD.
He also said his complaints were about the dignity of the families affected by the donors and the way their remains were treated.
“There are people who are in our cooler now who need their body parts back and they’ve been there for three years or more,” Wheatley told the TV station. “Right now at AGA, we have a number of cremains that need to go back to families, out of hundreds of cremains, sitting at our AGM right now.”
The rack room manager also filed a police report after the dismembered heads appeared on his desk. But, according to his lawyer, he does not want to have to file a complaint. He just wants to get back to work once the conditions there change.
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Wheatley told the Tribune. “I can’t even sleep. Just the only thing I can think of, reworking it over and over in my head. I can’t believe this is happening.
Law&Crime contacted the AGA to comment on this story, but no response was immediately received upon publication.
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